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Monday, April 11, 2011

Now I'm Mad... My mother would have said “only dogs get mad”, but I’m as mad as a rabid dog. Which yahoo in Congress doesn’t get that

Now I’m mad. My mother would have said “only dogs get mad”, but I’m as mad as a rabid dog. Which yahoo in Congress doesn’t get that unless we stop having wars, we will never balance the budget. What in the world are all our “elected” officials thinking?

Yes, let’s cut programs for the elderly, the sick, the children, the poor. the helpless, and the homeless. But lets worry about those poor civilians on whom we have made, intentional or unintentional war. The Republicans say Obama is not a leader. The Democrats say he is leading us in the wrong direction –all of this is a case for electing someone who can make a reasonable and thoughtful decision about the kind of President we want. It’s unfortunately a case for Donald Trump. Maybe it’s the worse case scenario, but someone forgot to tell the President that Democrats are diplomacy people – we don’t like war. Never did, never will – especially one where we have no idea what exactly we are fighting for, and why we are doing it. But that’s not what I wanted to blob about.

There seems to be a sale on funerals for mothers. My mom dies in July, and since then I have at least ten friends who have lost their moms. It’s true they were all in their late 80’s or 90’s but everyone at once. There has to be something in the air. And those friends whose mom’s are still here, are likely to lose them in the next few months. I have been to more memorial services and ‘shiva’s’ than I care to discuss—but I will.

As I said, most of the mothers were in their late 80’s or 90’s. Some were ill, some were lucid, some were disoriented, some were well—but tired, some just felt it was time to go and some just went to sleep. However they went, they are sadly, gone.

They pretty much had wonderful lives, at least this is true for the people I know. Again, they lived out their lives in different ways, some with family, some in assisted/independent living/ some on their own. A few of the moms had determined never to leave their homes. Kind of like when you hear a hurricane is coming and decide that there’s no where else they wanted to be. My mom had an apartment in a retirement home right near my brother. Steve’s mom was still living alone. And I could give you examples of way too many moms who made decisions about how they wanted to live, and more importantly, how they wanted to die. And now, the baby boomers have become, among so many other firsts, a generation of orphans. I guess this doesn’t make me as mad as makes me sad, but there are those things about which I needn’t be first.

Maybe you feel like these two things, the war and losing our moms are separate and unrelated issues. I disagree. We are equally saddened by the young people who are dying without having lived, in unexplained wars, and the old people who have lived mostly wonderful lives, through a number of wars, both have monumental impact on our lives. Loss, no matter when, is still loss. The difference is that young people dying is unexpected and old people dying seems something that is part of life. But when these people, no matter the age, are permanently removed from our lives it still leaves us empty, and sometimes even, yes, angry. We’re just sayin’.... Iris